The proliferation of the personal computer and the rapid expansion of Internet access in recent years have contributed significantly to the popularity of “online” shopping among consumers worldwide. Many merchants now provide online shopping alternatives to consumers, complete with detailed descriptions of goods and services, as well as pricing that can change immediately to reflect changing market conditions.
Just as personal computers and the Internet have fueled the growth of online shopping, online shopping, in turn, has fueled the growth of an entirely new online service industry that caters to consumers looking for the best price on goods and services. Typically, these new service providers collect product information from a variety of online shops, and then present the product information to the consumer through a website in a format suitable for product and price comparisons. Consequently, such websites have become known colloquially as “comparison shopping” websites.
Currently, comparison shopping websites typically implement one of two methods of collecting product information. The first method for comparison shopping involves the creation of a search engine that allows a consumer to select a product of interest from a predefined list of products or to insert a particular product into a search field. Once the consumer has selected or inserted a product, the search engine searches for similar products in multiple merchants' websites to find the prices and availability offered by each. The results are presented to the user through a webpage that lists the merchant, product, price, and availability, along with other data particular to each comparison shopping website. From this webpage, the consumer can choose the merchant and product that best meets the consumer's needs. Generally, the consumer then can purchase the product either from the comparison shopping site or from the merchant's online shop or physical location.
Another popular comparison shopping solution requires more interaction with the merchant than the method just described. Rather than searching merchant websites, as described above, merchants insert product information, such as price, product description, and availability, directly into a comparison shopping database, or they send their information to a third-party host who inserts the information into the database. See U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2003/0074267 A1 (published Apr. 17, 2003). When a consumer accesses this type of comparison shopping website, he or she enters product search criteria through a dynamic webpage. A web server then queries the database to find products matching the consumer's criteria. The database returns all matching products, which the web server displays to the consumer through a web browser. The consumer then can act upon the information accordingly.
To date, some industries have harnessed comparison shopping and its capabilities better than others. The airline, rental car, hotel, and personal electronic industries, in particular, are well represented in comparison shopping websites. Merchants of groceries and other household products, though, have not yet been able to offer an effective comparison shopping service. While several websites have allowed consumers to purchase groceries online, the prices and inventory have been limited to single merchants.
Financial management software also has become popular with personal computer users. Users of such software as INTUIT's QUICKEN and MICROSOFT MONEY have always been able to track savings and checking account balances, credit card balances, and other spending habits. Today, though, many of these programs also allow users to retrieve bank and credit card statements over the Internet. Generally, users also can view spending habits and account balances in graphs and charts, which allow the user to analyze trends and cash flow.
Thus, neither online shopping nor financial management software is new. Currently, though, consumers have no effective means for integrating their online shopping experience with their financial management software. The invention described below addresses the need in the art for such a means, which would provide many benefits to the consumer. Specifically, a consumer could use such a means to integrate a personal budget into shopping criteria, which the consumer could then combine with a single shopping list to compare products at a variety of stores. The consumer also could transfer shopping information and comparison results to a mobile device, which the consumer then could take to a store for easy reference. These and other objects of the invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art from the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment of the invention.